Curtis Hunter v. Lieutenant Morris, et al

[DO NOT PUBLISH]
In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Eleventh Circuit
____________________
No. 22-11599
Non-Argument Calendar
____________________
CURTIS HUNTER,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
versus
RIVERBEND CORRECTIONAL FACILITY, et al.,
Defendants,
LIEUTENANT MORRIS,
In his/her individual and official capacity,
TAMMY BAILEY,
THE GEO GROUP INC,
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2 Opinion of the Court 22-11599
Defendants-Appellees.
____________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Middle District of Georgia
D.C. Docket No. 5:19-cv-00491-MTT
____________________
Before N EWSOM, G RANT, and E DMONDSON , Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:
Curtis Hunter, proceeding pro se,1 appeals the district court’s
final judgment in favor of defendants in his civil action brought un-
der 42 U.S.C. § 1983. On appeal, Hunter challenges the district
court’s orders (1) dismissing Hunter’s claims against Dr. Steven
Niergarth; (2) extending the time to file dispositive motions;
(3) denying Hunter’s motions to compel and to stay discovery; and
(4) granting summary judgment in favor of The GEO Group, Inc.
(“GEO”) and Lieutenant Marcus Morris on Hunter’s Eighth
Amendment failure-to-protect and conditions-of-confinement
claims.2 No reversible error has been shown; we affirm.
1 We read liberally appellate briefs filed by pro se litigants. See Timson v.
Sampson, 518 F.3d 870, 874 (11th Cir. 2008). We also construe liberally pro se
pleadings. See Tannenbaum v. United States, 148 F.3d 1262, 1263 (11th Cir.
1998).
2 Construed liberally, Hunter’s appellate brief raises no substantive challenge
to the district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of GEO and
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22-11599 Opinion of the Court 3
I.
Briefly stated, this civil action arises out of a physical alter-
cation among inmates on 10 December 2017, while Hunter was in-
carcerated at Riverbend Correctional Facility (“Riverbend”): a
prison owned and operated by GEO. An initial fight broke out be-
tween members of two different gangs, after which the instigating
inmate was placed in restraints. Following the initial incident, Lieu-
tenant Morris ordered inmates secured in their dormitory units.
Shortly thereafter, a second fight erupted between members
of the two gangs. Hunter was not a member of either gang. Nev-
ertheless, Hunter says he intervened in the fight to try to calm the
situation. During the incident, Hunter slipped on a wet area of the
tiled floor, fell, and injured his right knee.
Hunter was first examined by the medical staff at Riverbend
and was later referred to a private orthopedist, Dr. Niergarth.
Hunter visited Dr. Niergarth three times between January and
March 2018. Hunter was released from custody on 18 May 2018.
In December 2019, Hunter filed this civil action under 42
U.S.C. § 1983. Pertinent to this appeal, Hunter’s amended com-
plaint asserted a claim against Dr. Niergarth for deliberate indiffer-
ence to a serious medical need, in violation of the Eighth Amend-
ment. Hunter also asserted Eighth Amendment claims (1) against
Tammy Bailey on Hunter’s Eighth Amendment claim for deliberate indiffer-
ence to a serious medical need. That claim is thus not properly before us on
appeal.
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4 Opinion of the Court 22-11599
GEO3 and Lieutenant Morris for failure to protect him from bodily
harm and (2) against GEO for hazardous conditions of confine-
ment.
In December 2020, the district court granted Dr. Niergarth’s
motion to dismiss, concluding that Hunter had failed to state a
plausible claim for relief under the Eighth Amendment.
On 7 April 2022, the district court granted GEO and Lieu-
tenant Morris’s motion for summary judgment. In the same order,
the district court denied Hunter’s outstanding motions to compel
and to stay discovery.
II.
A. Dismissal of Claims against Dr. Niergarth
We review de novo a district court’s dismissal for failure to
state a claim, accepting all properly alleged facts as true and con-
struing them in the light most favorable to the plaintiff. See Butler
v. Sheriff of Palm Beach Cty., 685 F.3d 1261, 1265 (11th Cir. 2012).
“To survive a motion to dismiss, a complaint must contain
sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to state a claim to relief
that is plausible on its face.” Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009)
(quotation omitted). To state a plausible claim for relief, plaintiffs
must go beyond merely pleading the “sheer possibility” of unlawful
activity by a defendant; plaintiffs must offer “factual content that
3 Hunter’s amended complaint named Riverbend as a defendant. GEO was
later substituted as the proper party.
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22-11599 Opinion of the Court 5
allows the court to draw the reasonable inference that the defend-
ant is liable for the misconduct alleged.” Id.
To state an Eighth Amendment claim for deliberate indiffer-
ence to a serious medical need, a plaintiff must allege facts sufficient
to demonstrate two things: (1) “an objectively serious medical
need” and (2) “that prison officials acted with deliberate indiffer-
ence to that need.” See Keohane v. Fla. Dep’t of Corr. Sec’y, 952 F.3d
1257, 1266 (11th Cir. 2020). A prison official acts with deliberate
indifference when he “(1) had subjective knowledge of a risk of se-
rious harm, (2) disregarded that risk, and (3) acted with more than
gross negligence.” Wade v. McDade, 67 F.4th 1363, 1374 (11th Cir.
2023) (emphasis omitted).
The Eighth Amendment does not mandate that medical care
for prisoners be “perfect, the best obtainable, or even very good.”
See Hoffer v. Sec’y, Fla. Dep’t of Corr., 973 F.3d 1263, 1271 (11th Cir.
2020). We have stressed that “medical treatment violates the
Eighth Amendment only when it is so grossly incompetent, inade-
quate, or excessive as to shock the conscience or to be intolerable
to fundamental fairness.” See id. (brackets omitted).
In his amended complaint, Hunter alleged these facts, which
we accept as true and construe in Hunter’s favor. On 11 January
2018, Dr. Niergarth took x-rays of Hunter’s knee, provided Hunter
with a stabilizing knee brace, and directed Hunter to return in one
month. On 9 February, Dr. Niergarth took more x-rays and or-
dered an MRI on Hunter’s knee.
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6 Opinion of the Court 22-11599
On 7 March, Dr. Niergarth discussed the MRI results with
Hunter. Dr. Niergarth diagnosed Hunter with a tibial plateau frac-
ture: an injury that could be fixed only by total knee replacement.
Dr. Niergarth, however, told Hunter that he was too young for a
total knee replacement and that such a procedure would last only
ten years. Hunter says Dr. Niergarth then had Hunter return the
stabilizing brace, provided no other brace, crutches, or pain medi-
cine, and failed to refer Hunter to another orthopedic surgeon for
a second opinion.
For purposes of this appeal, we accept that Hunter’s knee
injury constitutes an objectively serious medical need. Hunter,
however, has failed to allege facts showing plausibly that Dr. Nier-
garth’s medical care was so grossly incompetent, inadequate, or
conscience-shocking that it rose to the level of an Eighth Amend-
ment violation. That Hunter disagrees with Dr. Niergarth’s medi-
cal opinions about Hunter’s candidacy for a total knee replacement
and about the continuing need for a stabilizing knee brace is insuf-
ficient to establish an Eighth Amendment violation. See Keohane,
952 F.3d at 1266 (“[A] simple difference in medical opinion between
the prison’s medical staff and the inmate as to the latter’s diagnosis
or course of treatment fails to support a claim of cruel and unusual
punishment.” (brackets omitted)).
The district court committed no error in dismissing -- for
failure to state a claim -- Hunter’s deliberate-indifference claim
against Dr. Niergarth.
B. Motions for Extension of Time
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22-11599 Opinion of the Court 7
Hunter next contends that the district court abused its dis-
cretion by twice granting GEO and Lieutenant Morris an extension
of time to file a motion for summary judgment. We disagree.
To the extent Hunter argues that the district court erred in
granting an extension absent a showing of excusable neglect, that
argument is without merit. We have said that “[a] timely motion
to extend is reviewed for good cause, not excusable neglect, . . . and
should be liberally granted absent a showing of bad faith or undue
prejudice.” See Lizarazo v. Miami-Dade Corr. & Rehab. Dep’t, 878 F.3d
1008, 1012 (11th Cir. 2017) (quotation and citation omitted, altera-
tion adopted); see also Fed. R. Civ. P. 6(b) (“When an act may or
must be done within a specified time, the court may, for good
cause, extend the time . . . if the court acts, or if a request is made,
before the original time or its extension expires[.]”).
GEO and Lieutenant Morris twice moved for a 14-day exten-
sion of time to move for summary judgment. GEO and Lieutenant
Morris asserted that they had worked diligently to prepare their
summary-judgment motion. About the first request, GEO and
Lieutenant Morris also stated that an extension was necessary due
to outstanding discovery issues and a pending hearing scheduled
the day after the then-deadline for filing dispositive motions.
Because each extension request was made before the appli-
cable deadline then-in-effect for filing dispositive motions, the re-
quests were subject to good-cause review. The record supports a
finding that good cause existed to grant the requested extensions.
In addition, nothing evidences that the motions for extension were
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8 Opinion of the Court 22-11599
filed in bad faith or resulted in undue delay or prejudice. The dis-
trict court abused no discretion in granting GEO and Lieutenant
Morris’s motions for extensions of time.
C. Motions to Compel Discovery and to Stay Discovery
We next reject Hunter’s arguments challenging the district
court’s denial of his motions to compel discovery and to stay dis-
covery. We begin with some background.
In June 2021, Hunter moved for sanctions based in part on
GEO’s purported failure to produce specific prison surveillance
videos. The district court conducted a hearing on Hunter’s sanc-
tions motion and ordered GEO to file a verified statement address-
ing the availability of the requested video evidence. GEO pro-
duced a sworn affidavit from an investigator at Riverbend confirm-
ing that GEO had provided all available videos to Hunter. On 24
August 2021, the district court denied Hunter’s motion for sanc-
tions. In doing so, the district court rejected Hunter’s assertion that
GEO had been untruthful about the availability of the requested
video evidence.
One week later, Hunter filed the motion to compel discov-
ery at issue. In his motion, Hunter sought to compel the produc-
tion of the same video evidence that was central to Hunter’s earlier
sanctions motion. Given that the district court had already rejected
Hunter’s arguments about GEO’s failure to produce additional
video evidence, the district court committed no error in denying
Hunter’s later-filed motion to compel that same evidence.
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22-11599 Opinion of the Court 9
Nor did the district court err in denying Hunter’s motion to
stay discovery: a motion filed two months after the close of discov-
ery and two weeks after GEO and Lieutenant Morris moved for
summary judgment.
We reject Hunter’s contention that the district court vio-
lated his due process rights (1) by ruling on his motion to compel
and his motion to stay discovery several months after the motions
were filed, or (2) by ruling on Hunter’s motions on the same day
the district court granted summary judgment in favor of Defend-
ants. Hunter has failed to demonstrate that the timing or manner
of the district court’s rulings deprived him of a constitutionally-
protected interest or constituted constitutionally inadequate pro-
cess. See Worthy v. Phenix City, Ala., 930 F.3d 1206, 1223 (11th Cir.
2019).
D. Summary Judgment
Hunter next challenges the district court’s grant of sum-
mary judgment in favor of GEO and Lieutenant Morris on
Hunter’s Eighth Amendment conditions-of-confinement and fail-
ure-to-protect claims.
We review de novo the district court’s grant of summary
judgment. See Holloman v. Mail-Well Corp., 443 F.3d 832, 836 (11th
Cir. 2006). “Summary judgment is appropriate when the evidence,
viewed in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party, presents
no genuine issue of material fact and compels judgment as a matter
of law in favor of the moving party.” Id. at 836-37.
1. Conditions of Confinement
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10 Opinion of the Court 22-11599
To establish an Eighth Amendment violation, a prisoner
must satisfy both an objective and a subjective component. See
Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 834 (1994). In a conditions-of-con-
finement context, a prisoner satisfies the objective component by
showing an “extreme” condition that posed an “unreasonable risk
of serious damage to his future health or safety.” See Swain v. Junior,
958 F.3d 1081, 1088 (11th Cir. 2020) (quotations omitted). “[T]o
satisfy the ‘subjective component,’ the prisoner must show that the
prison official acted with deliberate indifference.” Id. at 1088-89.
“A prison official acts with deliberate indifference when he knows
of and disregards an excessive risk to inmate health or safety.” Id.
at 1089 (quotations omitted). “[T]he official must both be aware of
facts from which the inference could be drawn that a substantial
risk of serious harm exists, and he must also draw the inference.”
Farmer, 511 U.S. at 837. Deliberate indifference requires a defend-
ant to have “acted with more than gross negligence.” See Wade, 67
F.4th at 1374 (emphasis in original).
Hunter has failed to present evidence sufficient to satisfy ei-
ther the objective or subjective component of his conditions-of-
confinement claim against GEO. Hunter argues chiefly that GEO
knew about the condensation on the floor and failed to remedy it.
But Hunter has not shown that the alleged condensation on the
floor rose to the level of an “extreme” condition that posed an “ob-
jectively intolerable risk of harm.” See Swain, 958 F.3d at 1088.
Nor has Hunter presented evidence that would support a
reasonable inference -- or evidence demonstrating that prison
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22-11599 Opinion of the Court 11
officials in fact drew the inference -- that the complained-of condi-
tion posed a substantial risk of serious harm. To the extent prison
officials knew about the alleged condensation on the floor or about
a possible risk of a slip-and-fall, the alleged failure to remedy the
situation is something more akin to negligence. Hunter has thus
failed to demonstrate a sufficiently culpable state of mind to trigger
Eighth Amendment liability.
2. Failure to Protect
Hunter also contends that GEO and Lieutenant Morris ex-
hibited deliberate indifference for his safety by failing to respond
adequately to the 10 December 2017 altercation and by failing to
implement appropriate policies and procedures for addressing in-
mate gang violence.
“To survive summary judgment on a deliberate indifference
failure-to-protect claim, a plaintiff must produce sufficient evidence
of (1) a substantial risk of serious harm; (2) the defendant’s delib-
erate indifference to that risk; and (3) causation.” Mosley v. Zachery,
966 F.3d 1265, 1270 (11th Cir. 2020) (quotation and brackets omit-
ted). “[A] prison official violates the Eighth Amendment in [a fail-
ure-to-protect] context only when a substantial risk of harm, of
which the official is subjectively aware, exists and the official does
not respond reasonably to the risk.” Id. at 1276.
About Hunter’s claim against Lieutenant Morris, Hunter has
failed to present evidence sufficient to show that Lieutenant Morris
was subjectively aware of a substantial risk of harm to Hunter aris-
ing from the 10 December 2017 incident. Hunter was not a
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12 Opinion of the Court 22-11599
member of either of the gangs involved in the initial altercation.
Nor has Hunter shown that he was targeted for gang violence. The
record supports the district court’s determination that Lieutenant
Morris’s efforts to control the situation were reasonable and
demonstrated no deliberate indifference to a known risk.
Moreover, Hunter cannot show that his knee injury was
caused by Lieutenant Morris’s purported deliberate indifference.
Instead, Hunter participated voluntarily in the altercation and --
while attempting to kick a fellow inmate -- slipped and fell on an
area of the floor that Hunter says was known to collect condensa-
tion. In other words, Hunter’s injuries were caused by his own con-
duct, not by Lieutenant Morris’s response (or lack thereof ) to the
situation.
The district court also concluded reasonably that GEO was
entitled to summary judgment on Hunter’s failure-to-protect
claim. To prevail on an Eighth Amendment claim against a private
company performing a state function -- like GEO -- a plaintiff must
show that the company “advanced a policy or custom of deliberate
indifference that led to the violation of [the plaintiff’s] constitu-
tional right.” See Ireland v. Prummell, 53 F.4th 1274, 1289 (11th Cir.
2022) (quotations and emphasis omitted). “[T]o demonstrate a pol-
icy or custom, it is ‘generally necessary to show a persistent and
wide-spread practice.’” McDowell v. Brown, 392 F.3d 1283, 1289
(11th Cir. 2004); see also Ireland, 53 F.4th at 1290 (“[P]roof of a single
incident of unconstitutional activity is not sufficient to demon-
strate a policy or custom for purposes of § 1983 liability.”).
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22-11599 Opinion of the Court 13
Hunter has identified no persistent or widespread “policy or
custom” that led to his injury. To the extent Hunter contends that
the prison was routinely understaffed, we have said that prison un-
derstaffing does not rise to the level of an Eighth Amendment vio-
lation absent evidence of a “deliberate intent to inadequately staff”
the facility. See McDowell, 392 F.3d at 1291.
We affirm the district court’s grant of summary judgment
in favor of defendants.
AFFIRMED.
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